My wallet is not in my pocket. It should be, it's not. It's on my dresser top. I now can't buy caffeine, let alone food. I allowed myself to become distracted by my tie. I disturbed my routine.

The trick, if you're me, is to make sure that things you might forget are kept right with things that you literally can't forget. When I put my wallet down every night, I put the car key on top of it. Since it is physically impossible for me to drive to work without the key, this means I can't go to work without at least seeing the wallet - and, better yet, seeing the wallet right as I'm picking up stuff to put in my pockets.

In the unfortunate circumstance where I am somehow interrupted between picking up my key and pocketing my wallet, God help me.

Turns out real life isn't ACID compliant.

I put things that I wear every day in the exact same spot every time I take them out/off.

When things go wandering away, I tend to forget them. I also pat myself down for wallet, watch, cell phone, ipod, and keys. It's the few times that I don't pat down that I forget something.

Yerp. I'm very precise in where I put stuff. I also leave myself calendar reminders for later, like, "pack widget X for work tomorrow."

And my morning routine is always the exact same - take mouthful of mouthwash and clean glasses while shower is warming up, jump in, ponder my wardrobe for the day, shave, jump out, towel off, brush toofs, take meds, put on face lotion, chapstick, brush hairs, leave bathroom. The occasional day that I do something out of order just blows my whole rhythm.

And my morning routine is always the exact same - take mouthful of mouthwash and clean glasses while shower is warming up, jump in, ponder my wardrobe for the day, shave, jump out, towel off, brush toofs, take meds, put on face lotion, chapstick, brush hairs, leave bathroom. The occasional day that I do something out of order just blows my whole rhythm.

I forgot to put deodorant on the other day because I did brush hair after face cream, instead of before. SO CONFUSED. Brain is a funny thing.

Let's start with making the humans computational power instead of energy sources. - Now the reason for "The Matrix" keeping people around is simple: people's minds are The Matrix. - Making it not a utopia is simple: challenges for human minds to solve keep minds strong. We already have evidence of that.

Now, the functioning of the Red and Blue pills. - One pill makes your consciousness isolated to your body, and removes all other parts of the matrix from your mind at the same time. - The other pill just kills you (you simply tell people that they 'go back to their dream life'. In actuality, you want people that aren't on your side to be dead, since that takes away the power of the Matrix.

And the conflict: The Matrix can't have people leaving, since that means less power for it. Humans don't like the idea of people enslaved for computation, and so want everybody to be on their side. It's a true battle between worlds, instead of a "why don't you just use fission?"-type question to ask the machines.

Let's start with making the humans computational power instead of energy sources. - Now the reason for "The Matrix" keeping people around is simple: people's minds are The Matrix. - Making it not a utopia is simple: challenges for human minds to solve keep minds strong. We already have evidence of that.

Now, the functioning of the Red and Blue pills. - One pill makes your consciousness isolated to your body, and removes all other parts of the matrix from your mind at the same time. - The other pill just kills you (you simply tell people that they 'go back to their dream life'. In actuality, you want people that aren't on your side to be dead, since that takes away the power of the Matrix.

And the conflict: The Matrix can't have people leaving, since that means less power for it. Humans don't like the idea of people enslaved for computation, and so want everybody to be on their side. It's a true battle between worlds, instead of a "why don't you just use fission?"-type question to ask the machines.

Makes much more sense, but then why bother with the Matrix at all if what they are doing is computing the Matrix. Just get rid of people and spend your time on something else.

Makes much more sense, but then why bother with the Matrix at all if what they are doing is computing the Matrix. Just get rid of people and spend your time on something else.

They are computing other things -- the main ones being the AI's themselves. It's the excess computational power that is available when humans are "sleeping". Otherwise, you need human minds to keep operating as if they existed in the real world so they don't become tapioca.

My PC started sounding like a lawnmower last night...the guy at the PC hardware store wanted to sell me a new heat sink/fan combo, but all I needed was a new 80mm fan. Don't need to mess with no thermal paste, thank you. All better, and gave everything a good cleaning too. I need to remember to do that more often. 10 bucks I wouldn't have needed to spend, most likely.

I don't want to do my goddamned homework. I don't want to write about equal protection clauses to the 14th amendment and get into the citizens united argument. I don't want to describe the legislative process of how a bill becomes law. Can't I just show my teacher the school house rock video and he accepts that and gives me an A for being awesome?

1. Occasionally I make notes to myself of things to post later in the random thread.2. I have a correspondent of Ms A Celin, who is amusingly similar to Imp y Celyn by name.3. "What do you remember?" it croaked, all gnarled bone jaw and mawkish vapours.4. Renewed obsession with numbering things.5. Mr Grima.6. The invasion assumes a gravitational pattern...7. I looked up a slightly randomly* (found location on Google maps - a small town in Brazil. Dropped the streetview marker in to take a look around. Found myself opposite a Casa de Carnes. Zoomed in a bit. There was a shiny display cabinet. A patch of vibrant green, which turned out to be the reflection of the Google van door along with its mysterious driver, heh.8. Something something blankness mumble.

7. I looked up a slightly randomly* (found location on Google maps - a small town in Brazil. Dropped the streetview marker in to take a look around. Found myself opposite a Casa de Carnes. Zoomed in a bit. There was a shiny display cabinet. A patch of vibrant green, which turned out to be the reflection of the Google van door along with its mysterious driver, heh.

I did that once (went to a random location in Google Street View). I found not only a second street view car driving right ahead of the car taking the picture (with camera covered; presumably it was en route to or from wherever it was taking pictures that day), but what appeared to be a manager's or maintenance car also driving alongside (same make and model as the visible Street View car, but without the camera apparatus and without the google branding on the car).

No, I have no clue where this was, nor did I get a screenshot-- I had dropped the marker with the map zoomed to view the whole US, and accidentally zoomed back out before I could get the location or a screenshot . All I know is that it was somewhere in the general vicinity of Kansas or Oklahoma.

I am not a free market fanatic, but the new Matrix could be populated by volunteers. The machines could offer a life of relative ease in exchange for bioelectricty. Not only does the matrix make a post apocalyptic life more bearable, but you get to intermingle with sympathetic machine entities who are the same as you in the matrix, but stuck inside some machine in reality. It is the intermingling of human and machine that would tempt me into the matrix.

I am not a free market fanatic, but the new Matrix could be populated by volunteers. The machines could offer a life of relative ease in exchange for bioelectricty. Not only does the matrix make a post apocalyptic life more bearable, but you get to intermingle with sympathetic machine entities who are the same as you in the matrix, but stuck inside some machine in reality. It is the intermingling of human and machine that would tempt me into the matrix.

That certainly would be an awesome way to start it out -- the fact that people did not "lose a war to the machines", but rather surrendered willingly.

I'm completely depressed.It all looked good. the lookup said it was available. so I paid my 50$ and was eagerly awaiting completion.Today I get the refund email saying "staring" was taken. I may never have a @goatse.cx email address now.

You know what just made my day? Getting to the hotel (a Hilton) expecting to have to pay for WiFi, then finding out that AT&T apparently operates Hilton's WiFi now and (since I have AT&T DSL) I can connect for free.

So my kid started playing with the "Scratch" program that comes with the Raspberry Pi image I put on his machine. It is an awesome introduction to programming, and he instantly started trying to figure out how to make circles and squares do different things, and made little movies, etc, etc,

Very nice setup as a parent -- a small computer, not connected to the internet, that he can't break (and if he does, it's $35). Very cool.

You know what just made my day? Getting to the hotel (a Hilton) expecting to have to pay for WiFi, then finding out that AT&T apparently operates Hilton's WiFi now and (since I have AT&T DSL) I can connect for free.

Yay!

I've been seeing Xfinity hotspots showing up at places that have them for internet. It's a nice feature.